From September 13, 2006 to December 26, 2008 by proxy, Dave Sim kept up a daily blog called The Blog & Mail. It came to an end because his computer seized up and he decided to go back to his electric typewriter. Claude Flowers is presently inventorying the files recovered from the dead computer's harddrive.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Dave Sim's blogandmail #460 (December 15th, 2007)

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Fifteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast That Make You a Good Feminist

1. A mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the raising of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time.

2. It makes great sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its mother - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society.

3. A woman's doctor has more of a valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the father of that fetus.

4. So long as a woman makes a decision after consulting with her doctor, she is incapable of making an unethical choice.

5. A car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership.

6. It is absolutely necessary for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be women only environments from which men are excluded.

7. Because it involves taking jobs away from men and giving them to women, affirmative action makes for a fairer and more just society.

8. It is important to have lower physical standards for women firepersons and women policepersons so that, one day, half of all firepersons and policepersons will be women, thus more effectively protecting the safety of the public.

9. Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be maintained now that more women than men are being enrolled, in order to keep from giving men an unfair advantage academically.

10. Having ensured that there is no environment for men where women don't belong (see no.6) it is important to have zero tolerance of any expression or action which any woman might regard as sexist to ensure greater freedom for everyone.

11. Only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals.

12. An airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more.

13. A man's opinions on how to rear and/or raise a child are invalid because he is not the child's mother. However, his financial obligation is greater because no woman gets pregnant by herself.

14. Disagreeing with any of these statements makes you anti-woman and/or a misogynist.

15. Legislature Seats must be allocated to women and women must be allowed to bypass the democratic winnowing process in order to guarantee female representation and, thereby, make democracy fairer.

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The World's Shortest Blog & Mail Entries

EVER as Secret Project #2 Comes to the Direct

Market

Okay, these are apt to be some of the shortest Blog & Mail entries in history. It's December 10 where I am and Secret Project #2 has been a "Go" for roughly two weeks now. Yes, it was a great surprise to me, too (or I wouldn't have started answering Asa's Fifteen Impossible Things letter knowing there was likely to be a two month gap before I could get back to it). But suddenly, there I was with the Real World Preview Edition and Comics World Preview Editions on disc and in a FedEx envelope, standing at the FedEx drop box at the corner of King and Benton watching myself push it into the slot.

My favourite joke around here is that writing and drawing a new bi-monthly title doesn't bother me, but promotion makes me sick. Literally. I thought I had another case of whatever it was that I had in January. Fortunately it pretty quickly subsided into garden variety flu. But it has been inopportune. I am faced with having a hundred different things to do to promote the first issue release in April OR lie down and get well. Trying to balance the two, so far I'm sort of sick and sort of getting everything done that needs to get done.

Just interrupted by an emergency phone call from Lebonfon regarding the Real World Preview Edition. Send a fax telling Patrick to e-mail Sandeep. Still trying to get a fax to go through to Recker Distribution to answer a completely pointless question of Julie's from Friday. Her phone message said specifically "give me a phone call" and since then the fax machine hasn't worked. Or has been busy.

Sorry folks, the phone calls have been the first thing that had to go (as you will find out if you phone the office and listen to the message). As soon as I came down to crunch time, the phone started ringing on a regular basis, 9 times out of 10 a pointless interruption that I can't afford right now.

Okay, another fax coming in. Lebonfon. What is Sandeep's e-mail address? Unbelievable. He's been sending them computer files for a year now and they still need his e-mail address. This is the sort of thing the last two weeks have been made up of. First issue memories are made of this.

This is my last day working on the ComicsPRO pitch for the new title. For those of you tuning in late, ComicsPRO is a recently formed organization of comics retailers who are trying to improve things on the retail end of comics. I admire their tenacity and their cohesion and early made the suggestion that they might make Secret Project #2 a pilot project for them as an organization. Basically I am pitching them on the project first. Ultimately, I'll be making all the same information available here on the Blog & Mail during the retailers' ordering time period (end of January to mid-February) so that all retailers will be able to access it.

Monday: ComicsPRO and what I hope happens

Dave Sim sincerely apologizes for the brevity of these Blogs & Mails and hopes to be back to his usual minimum-two-pages of blithering self by mid-February at the latest once the actual launch of Secret Project #2 has taken place

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR THE FORMAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE TITLE AND SUBJECT OF SECRET PROJECT #2